“I am in Tora prison – a sprawling complex in the south of the city where the authorities routinely violate legally enshrined prisoners' rights, denying visits from lawyers, keeping cells locked for 20 hours a day (and 24 hours on public holidays)”.

These were the words of Australian Peter Greste in January in a letter describing the conditions of Cairo’s notorious Tora prison.

His “cold prison cell” with up to three other people inside, only measures three metres by four metres.

Soldiers guard outside of Tora Prison where al-Jazeera journalist and Australian citizen Peter Greste has been held. Photo: Reuters

Greste now faces seven years of similar conditions, after being sentenced for producing false news to defame Egypt.

Advertisement

His colleagues, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed are being housed in far worse conditions which Greste said in January was in the “Scorpion prison” section of Tora built for convicted terrorists.

“Both men spend 24 hours a day in their mosquito-infested cells, sleeping on the floor with no books or writing materials to break the soul- destroying tedium,” Greste wrote.

Al Jazeera journalist and Australian citizen Peter Greste stands inside the defendants' cage in a courtroom during the trial. Photo: AP

These are the conditions Greste’s parents fear will cause their son to deteriorate even further.

“I can't imagine that they could continue for seven years in a cell, the three of them, in a four by three metre cell. It's difficult enough,” Mrs Greste said on Tuesday.

Mr Greste told media in Brisbane: “What pains me personally is the knowledge that where he's been held certainly by Australian standards would be considered conditions of severe punishment.”

The jailing of Peter Greste and his fellow al-Jazeera journalists only serves to emphasise Egypt's tragic state.

Tora prison is a vast complex in South Cairo and reserved for criminal and political detainees, including many former ministers under Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

It is one of the largest and oldest prisons in Egypt and guards are notorious for torturing inmates.

"We’ve had numerous [accounts] of what goes on in Tora and the situation doesn’t look good,” Amnesty International spokesman Michael Hayworth told Fairfax Media.

“The men can expect over crowding, expect inadequate clothing and other facilities like toilets. And also they can expect a distinct lack of medical care”.

"Luckily we’ve had no reports of any torture against these men or ill-treatment but certainly we have seen cases in Tora prison where they get the ‘nortorius welcome’ - where people get taken in and get severe beatings and on arriving to Tora given electric shocks to parts of their body," he said.

UK photographer Alisdare Hickson, who spent spent 42 days in Tora prison in 2012 after being accused of throwing rocks while he was documenting the uprising in Egypt, described the complex as being “like a city of prisons each with its own walls and watch towers separating it from the other, all sandwiched between afluent suburbs in southern Cairo”.

“My cell had between 70 to 85 people. Concrete beds, permanent lockdown 24 hours a day, seven days a week and it was really very difficult,” Hickson told CBC News last year.

“My conditions were better than other Egyptians but still really a nightmare.”

The prison is believed to be divided into five sub-prisons, including the additional Scorpian prison which is reserved for solitary confinement .

Hickson said some of the worst areas of the prison were in the “punishment cells”, where inmates a would be taken if they were caught using a mobile phone.

“A prisoner was only allowed to wear his pyjama-like prison uniform, no jumper and no blankets or other possessions were allowed and it was then very cold at night ( often around 5 degrees ) as it was winter," he wrote on his blog.

In March, footage secretly filmed in one of Egypt’s maximum security prisons and published by the UK Telegraph, showed inmates crammed into cells and forced to sleep on concrete floors infested with insects and stained with sewage.

One confinement cell had a small kitchen area besides a dirty squat-down toilet while small possessions were hung from the wall on nails.

While the video did not identify the prison, the footage shows squalid conditions similar to those described by Hickson and Canadian filmmaker John Greyson, who was detained for 50 days in Tora prison last year.

Greyson said he was imprisoned “with 38 guys in a room 10 metres by 3 metres”.

“We were sleeping on the concrete [floor] and there were a lot of cockroaches and ants,” Greyson told Al Jazeera.

“We did have a single tap. Our showers were taking water with a sawed off Fanta bottle and dumping water on ourselves. When you're sleeping on concrete, you never really fall asleep as you have to turn over every 15 minutes.”

“The ordeal they [Al Jazeera staff] are facing I'm sure is much worse than what we did. The weather itself - I can't imagine what the cells are like in winter,” he said.

The Amnesty International spokesman said he was “unsure” whether Greste and his colleagues will be moved to another part of the prison following the sentencing.